Black Canary returns to Burnside.
Things are looking particularly grim for Barbara Gordon lately. She’s tormented by recurring nightmares and the fact that pieces of her memory are simply vanishing. All of this comes to a head in issue #48 as Babs teams up with Black Canary and confronts the architect of her current misery. The results are definitely entertaining, even if this issue tries to accomplish too much at once.
The problem is that it takes quite a while for the Babs/Dinah team-up to become the focus of the issue. Early on, writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher spotlight the Babs/Luke romance and their own team-up against a pair of amusing but ultimately inconsequential villains. As the script bounces from one set piece to the next, the pacing becomes hurried and several key moments are basically glossed over.
Luckily, the story does ultimately find its groove once the two heroines set out to confront their mutual foe. It’s great to see Stewart and Fletcher touching on Babs’ failed A.I. project again and building a conflict that turns her own mind against her. The pacing improves and the book gains a sense of danger it’s rarely achieved over the past year. All of this bodes well for the climax of this story arc.
The return of artist Babs Tarr certainly helps. Tarr’s dynamic always brings a lighthearted feel to the book, but she captures the more dramatic elements in this issue too. The coloring and lighting are key in that area, as the issue bounces from a moody, romantic rooftop date to a neon-lit fight sequence to a shadowy confrontation with the main villain. There is a bit of a stylistic shift late in the issue as Rob Haynes steps in to provide breakdown art. This doesn’t really impact Tarr’s line-work or character designs, but there is a noticeable shift in terms of the page layouts. Tarr’s solo pages play with negative space and panel borders in a Haynes’ don’t.
The current Batgirl conflict is building momentum as Babs teams up with an old friend and gets to the heart of her recent memory problems. This issue often struggles to find its groove as it barrels through several big scenes, but it finally settles down in time to do justice to this team-up.
